i kinda agree with @DrunkenPanda
If you build a system right now, and you mainaly build it for gaming.
Then i would recommend to go with a Skylake or Haswell i5.
You can build a skylake or haswell build for arround the same price as an FX8 core build nowdays,
which will perform better in gaming then a FX8350, especialy with a higherend gpu like a 390.
Keep in mind that you need a decent 970 or 990FX chipset board with a decent enough vrm design to run a FX8 core properly,
and next to that if you want to overclock them, you going to need a decent cooling solution aswell.
So in my opinnion there is not much reason to look into a 4 year old AMD FX platform for gaming anymore.
Unless you realy on a tighter budget.
But ofc thats my opinnion.
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Also i would recommend to change the Asus 390 for the Sapphire 390 Nitro OC.
Because the cooler on the Asus 390 isnt that great.
Thank you to everyone that has replied to this post. I'll take a deeper look into it all and definitely change some stuff up. When I've made my changes I'll probably post it back on this again (in the same thread obviously) and you fine folks and help me fine tune it again.
Additional help requested: how can I tell if a cooling system really is good? any recommended websites? All the stuff on pc part picker looks very similar to me; I probably am just not looking at the right stuff on the items. Also from my understanding gaming is mostly VRAM intensive; is there such thing as GPU coolers?
I'm not on a particularly tight budget. It's more of, like I stated earlier, my lack of knowledge of current strong components and such.
I did a bit of research into the SSD's and I did have one years and years ago. Other than my OS booting up faster and maybe a few other random things I could do faster, does having an SSD really matter than much for gaming? I'm under the impression that it only helps with like loading screens and such. (PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF I'M MISS INFORMED)
Well I appreciate your $.02; tis' why I'm here. Is there a reason my case I picked out is terrible? I thought it looked in terms of size (full for more room) and slots (for HDD's or whatever else can go in there).
ssd's are wonderful. your computer can use a section of the ssd as a cache for your hard drive so you basically have a ssd with the space of a hard drive as far as write times, it's silent, and everything is faster with it. whenever you do anything your computer has to get the right programs and such from your hard drive to run them. your os, picture veiwers, video players, games, obscure things you dont even know about, ect... and the bigger it is the longer it takes for your hard drive to access the information. ssd's do this way faster as namflash is just superior, but also because your hard drive has to actually physically move a arm with a laser to the right place on your spinning rust to read it.
also seagate is shit. and lg is rather noisy but works, Samsung ssd>crucial (go 850 evo), and windows ten is literally spyware.
oh and trust mistery on the sapphire 390 she/he is right.
I've built in a CM HAF... it was an unpleasant experience as compared to my Phanteks/Fractal/Corsair/NZXT builds... and it's super expensive for no particular reason
Seagate has been making hard drives for a very long time.
I've had no issues with my Seagate 600 SSD that I've had for almost 3 years.
As with anything though, YMMV.
edit: Oh, and backup your data!
Something like this would be a realy nice gaming setup with decent overclockability.
If you dont care about overclocking and you also dont care about sli or crossfire?
Then you could also go with something cheaper like a i5-6500 + H170 board.
Do you not need a sound card in builds these days to produce a crisper sound if you're planning to play through a set of good speakers?
@aaronauron if you want crisper sound, then buy an external DAC... but unless you need the amplification of an amp/DAC combo (most sound systems are self-sustained other than headphones), then using the back panel audio hookup is clean enough for most people... sound cards are for musicians...
@MisteryAngel ... do you consider Skylake worth an extra ~$100-200 for the CPU/mobo/DDR4? The chipset doesn't really offer a big jump over Z97 and the price/performance is certainly slanted to Haswell... granted, I'd likely fork it up just to get the latest thing if I were buying now but in general I could give a shit about price/performance on my personal rig :) .... Can you make a viable case of it being more economical long-term over a $900-1000 Haswell Xeon rig?
@DrunkenPanda Could you recommend any amp/DAC (I watched a video on youtube from NCIX tech tips so I finally know what you were talking about, hah)? Or possibly even better point me in a direction of a good website you know?
Does hyperthreading really matter very much? I see that CPU doesn't support it. I'm not exactly sure the performance increase for 3D rendering. Additionally, after watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utWnjA4NzSA I wonder if things really are moving towards DDR4 more now to make it more viable compared to when this video was posted.
Well... it really depends on what programs you use and their support of multi-cores... a desktop i5 has 4 physical cores with 4 threads... a Z97-based Xeon / i7 has 4 physical cores with 8 threads... hyperthreading won't double your productivity, but just to put it to an analogy that's easy to grasp...
let's say:
threads = cash registers
cores = clerks
programs = customers
processes = items to ring up
process triggers = coupons for items
cache = designated can't find my coupon area
Your store just had a big Christmas promotion that requires a coupon for certain items... you have 8 registers and 4 clerks... each clerk is assigned two registers adjacent to one another... the clerks ring everything up, but occasionally they hit an item that the customer has a coupon for... instead of waiting for the customer to dig up the coupon, the clerk runs over to it's vacant register and rings up other items... when the first customer produces the coupon, they are given priority... some customers can't for the life of them find their coupon, so they step out of line while they look for it into the designated area... the clerk continues to ring up items as efficiently as possible until there are no more items to be rang up...
Without hyper-threading, you have 4 clerks with 4 registers...
Some dickhole will inevitably come in here and exclaim I know nothing about how a CPU operates because it's an incomplete analogy, but it at least gives you the gist of the benefits of hyperthreading...
Now, do you need it? Depends on your work load...
As far as DDR4 vs DDR3... there's not a noticeable difference unless you're video-editing HUGE files for the most part... RAM is sort of a "you either have enough or you don't" kind of thing... the speed of RAM is negligible at best even in synthetic benches...
As for the DAC... https://www.mayflowerelectronics.com/shop/digital-to-analog-converters/objective2-with-odac/ .... that's what I use... quality of the product and customer service are TOP NOTCH and he gives a 10 year warranty... hard to beat... but it's pricey... regardless... the sound card is still inside the computer with all the interference that brings... if you truly want crisp, clear audio and the back panel doesn't float your boat, then an external DAC is the only answer to that situation.... the only use for a sound card in 2015-16 is to plug your guitar or whatnot in and even for that you buy USB cables...
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Depends on the ussage realy.
Haswell is basicly EOL and so is DDR3, you could jump into some great deals with haswell right now, because shops want to get rid of their last stocks.
There is basicly nothing wrong with jumping the Haswell boat, because in terms of raw cpu performance, there is not much of a diffrence.
But keep in mind if you like to upgrade your ram for example in the future, you might be endup paying allot more for EOL DDR3.
Other then that Haswell is ofc still a very good choice, skylake isnt that much faster in terms of raw cpu power.
At the moment DDR3 and DDR4 cost roughly the same.
Cpu´s and motherboards are slightly more expensive for skylake.
Thats true.
The biggest benefit that Skylake basicly offers over Haswell, is that the dmi bus is pci-e gen3 instead of pci-e gen 2.
In most use case scenario, this is not realy that interesting.
But it does improve connectivity arround the board allot, especialy if you want to use ultra fast ssd's.
Anyway, i was assuming that this build was mainaly for gaming by th way.
There was no additional information in the op, that this build will also be used for productivity like rendering and stuff.
If you are looking for a decent build for gaming and some heavy productivity stuff,
then i think it would be more worth it to look into X99 5820K, if he can afford.
If the build is mainaly for gaming, then a Haswell or Skylake i5 is basicly fine.
Well... let's say you're getting 8GB of ram.... for gaming... a haswell 4690k vs a skylake 6600k you're still getting the 8GB of ram for free.... there's no discernible performance gain for DDR4 in gaming... and you get a free $20 to throw into whatever on top of the free ram.... for the same performance cause a 4690k isn't bottle-necking any GPU or game on the market over 2 FPS vs a hyperthreaded CPU (that the Skylake i5 will also)...
If you're getting a PCIe SSD then yea... Skylake...but the sheer fact that you're getting a $300 SSD takes price/performance out of the equation...
I'm sure we agree here and the builds you proposed were certainly things I would rock in a heartbeat... they certainly recommend tried and true components that I agree with... I also respect you as a contributor so I'm not trying to devalue anything you contribute as it's correct from my POV as a consumer... but for OP... I think we can both agree he could spend $300 less on the Xeon build I proposed and get the exact same FPS and better productivity...
In a few months when skylake CPUs become more readily available, the price will drop and I'm sure I'll recommend it... but as the market stands right now... and we're talking about a year old CPU... not some outdated antiquity... if I wanted price/performance... Haswell is where I would go...
<3 u @MisteryAngel bright ass red case and all :D
Yes i agree in this point, THe Xeon E3-1231-V3 is definitely a great choice if you looking for a system to game on, and do some productivity stuff.
Its realy good value for money, especialy if you take in concideration that you could basicly just trow it on a cheaper H97 board, since its not overclockable anyway.
i was assuming that his build was mainaly for gaming.
Thats why i was recommending the Skylake i5 build.
If he does allot of heavy rendering stuff, then he might also look into X99 5820K if he could afford.
But yeah that will cost allot more.
The Skylake 6700K is realy not worth to look at atm.
They cost even more then a 5820K, and that makes no sense.
I recently built an X99-based rig for an engineer at the company I'm at... https://forum.teksyndicate.com/t/i7-5820k-r9-390-engineering-build/92688/4
Not cause he needed X99, but because price/performance to the 6700k was better and the 6700k was out of stock EVERYWHERE :P
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Yeah thats a very awesome system.
Realy a sweet spot for gaming + productivity workloads, content creation etc.
6700K 4 cores 8 threads, realy makes no sense,
if you can buy a 5820K 6 core 12 threads for significantly cheaper.
X99 also offer more expendability aswell as more pci-e lanes etc.
This is inherently true. That and the 5930K offers the same level of perf that the 5820K does but with even MORE LANES... All the lanes.. LOL
Well I feel terrible. I feel like I've been asking questions maybe I didn't need to ask and have gone away from my original ideas. I'm not particularly bound by any dollar amount other than me not willing to spend the money (So we'll say $1500 MAX - No peripherals considering I already have some. An exception I suppose would be a DAC and I've been thinking some sort of GPU cooler)
Gaming is my main incentive in this build, but I had been asking all these questions because I had thought about fiddling around with maybe some video recording (of games I play) and editing. Other than that I guess that most intense thing I would be doing is hosting games for my friends and I.
Based on all the help I've received thus far I'm going to see what I can put together here and I'll post something in a little bit. Again I apologize for asking questions that kept getting everyone off track and confused at what I wanted.
Ok... So I've come down to basically two different builds finally (I hope):
Build 1: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/8G6vBm
Build 2: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/zPNJJx
Which do you think will perform better? Is there anything you would change? As far as maybe Price/performance or maybe something I picked is unnecessary or might bottleneck another component.
From the two you posted... it's a no-brainer to do the i7 with a 240GB SSD... I wouldn't put blue ram on a red mobo... but that's being nitpicky :)
but for $1500.... I'd do an X99 rig: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/tDr94D
The Define R5 is a really nice case, but so is that Phanteks, and it's super easy to build in... great cable management, solid build quality... I added a case fan since it only comes with one for whatever reason...
for X99 you'd want 4 channel RAM since it's supported...
you won't see a big gaming increase but it'll murder 3D rendering... for an extra $20, I see no reason not to basically :)
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